This is not architecture | Carmelo Baglivo

My images are not architecture, otherwise they might likely appear as academic exercises; they are neither visions nor provocations comparable to any form of art.

They are reflections made public, meant to describe a city without a center or periphery, without antagonism, layered and heterogeneous, without objectifying languages, democratic and without demiurge.

The city is represented without the ancient-modern juxtaposition, without history, but as a place momentarily timeless, pure; the city of the abstract places, rather than of the abstract images.

Collages contribute to build up the imagery of a community, where each image takes on a clear political position: I do not believe in their neutrality. Collages are domestic and familiar representations, created with recognizable pieces of everyday life. They do not mean to build an image, but deconstruct it; they show architectures with no functions, places or structures that are waiting to be experienced.

Collages are individually independent but all together they form a whole story, they want to get out from the contemporary assumptions of an architecture resulting from self-referential objects, where the architect does not need the city anymore as the place of representation, but he needs the media.

I consider ended the period where architecture was used as a tool to boost the image of a city. In addition to standing-out architecture we need to spread quality. To get it we have to overcome the pragmatism characterizing many smallscale projects; it is precisely within these design ranges that architecture must find again the strength to be brave. The excitement of the past has extinguished, the economic and environmental crises have reduced the sense of omnipotence experienced by Western society and its actors. The mass is starting to move, to expose and to play politics, following web-based alternative paths. Through the web the person is back to be a social and public subject, providing different images of himself: we all have our showcase, it is up to the web, through sharing, to enrich and complete it.